More on Forgiveness

I want to elaborate on my last post.   Forgiveness is not easy, and there are lots of useful tips that begin with something like, “In order to forgive, first . . . [insert important, worthwhile spiritual point].”

But before all that:  In order to forgive, first someone must do something wrong.

Our culture is awash in fake forgiveness.  Part of it is linguistic — the words “I’m sorry” mean “I have sorrow”, and you can grieve many things, not only your sins.  The words “I apologize” have at their origin the idea of a defense, or explanation, that may well have nothing to do with guilt.  But we respond “I forgive you” to some of these innocent sorrows and defenses, and that can create the false impression that we are frequently forgiving when really we are not.

For example:

My mother-in-law is half an hour late.  I rant and stew.  How could she make me wait?!! And then she arrives, and it turns out there was a bad accident, she had left home early but was stuck in traffic for an hour [of course I didn’t have my phone with me, she did call], she is terribly sorry [she really is] that I was inconvenienced.  Well, I could say “I forgive you”, except she never did anything wrong.    She’s completely innocent.  If anything, I’m the guilty one, assuming the worst about her and getting mad before I even knew what had happened.

When we pretend we’re forgiving someone, but really they are innocent, that’s what I mean by “fake forgiveness”.    It is a genuine letting go of anger and bitterness, but it’s not the hard kind of forgiveness that Jesus demands.

Another kind of fake forgiveness is the “I understand”.   I once had a priest yell at me, in church, as I was saying my penance after confession.  He was a crotchety old man, hard of hearing, in a lot of pain due to various ailments, and probably fed up to here with other parishioners that were eerily like myself.  He was wrong.  A priest certainly should not march out into the pews and loudly and angrily continue the topic brought up in confession.  But I could understand.  Grumpy guy.  Grumpiness happens.  I was glad it was me and not some other person whose faith would be more easily shaken.  I argued with him, he took my point, two grumpy people satisfied to have each said our due.

–> But “I understand” can’t be the foundation of forgiveness.  It is a help, for certain.  It is the proverbial spoonful of sugar, that camaraderie and compassion for fellow sinners that makes it easier to overlook faults not unlike our own.  But Jesus asks me to forgive even the people who are just really, really bad.  The ones who have no excuse.

The nice thing is that many of us get to mostly wade in shallow waters.  We get to “forgive” innocent people, and we can comfortably go about excusing the genuine but minor wrong-doing that we face from day to day.

But what if we kept our perception of right and wrong perfectly clear?

To my mother-in-law, I wouldn’t say “I forgive you”.  I’d say: You haven’t done anything wrong.  Thank you so much for thinking of me, that is very thoughtful, but I’d be foolish to be mad at you when you are perfectly innocent.

And to Father Grumpy, instead of “I understand why he’s so crotchety, he’s old and over worked and his knees are killing him today”, It would be just:  That was wrong.  He should not have done that.  That was a real injustice against me, and against the sacrament, and against his ministry.  But I forgive him.  He doesn’t have a right to do what is wrong, but he does have a right to be forgiven, so I guess no excuse for me being Mrs. Grumpy the rest of the day.

***

Oh, I know.  These are ideals.  You think I’m any good at this?  No way.  I most certainly am not.  And I don’t guess I’m explaining it well, either.

But this is the staircase of depravity I was talking about earlier.  If I’m regularly patting myself on the back for “forgiving” innocent people, I’m fooling myself.  I haven’t got a clue about forgiveness until someone actually does something wrong.

And then if I explain away every real wrongdoing with a “he had a good reason”, “nobody is perfect”, “I’d be tempted too,” then I’ve missed my chance.   Of course I should understand — I could write a book on human weakness, of course I understand.  But I need to go beyond that.  Both so that my soul gets practice actually forgiving, and as a favor to my fellow sinners.

***

The first person who showed me forgiveness was a department secretary.  I owed her a form.  I didn’t fill out the form on time.  She came to my cube and said, “You didn’t give me the form.”

I made a thousand excuses.  I couldn’t bear to be actually wrong, because I didn’t know then that you could be wrong and still live.

And she kept saying to my every excuse, “I forgive you.  I forgive you.  Jennifer, I FORGIVE YOU.  (Now please shut up and fill out the form.)”

I finally shut up and filled out the form.

What? I had done something wrong?  And she freely acknowledged I DID SOMETHING WRONG?  And she wasn’t mad?  Even though I really had done something wrong?  At cost to her?  And she demanded nothing in repayment.  Not an apology, not an ‘I’ll make it up to you,” not even an “it will never happen again”.  Not even the pleasure of berating me for twenty seconds.  Nothing.

It was a completely new world to me.

***

And that’s the world I was talking about yesterday.  If that helps at all.  I know, I know.  Forgiving small things is so much easier.  Yes. Yes.  But it’s a start.   I think we kid ourselves if we say we can tackle anything bigger, before we’ve got a handle on how to forgive the little sins first.

And yeah, supernatural aid definitely required.

Grace and Generosity

Today in the car my eldest daughter was wishing for soft, cushion-y flip-flops.  “Maybe for your birthday,” I say.

“My birthday is in February.”

“So write a letter to Santa now, telling him what to look for on summer clearance in August.”

Children start composing letters aloud.

Then I suggest, “Wait a minute.  Not Santa.  Write to the Easter Bunny.”

Mr. Boy begins: “Dear Easter Bunny, I have been very good this year . . .”

And I correct: “No.  It’s Dear Easter Bunny, I have been very bad this year.  That is why I am thankful for Easter. If I were good, I wouldn’t need it . . .”

***

–> One of the advantages of homeschooling, is that the children labor under no illusions about mom’s sins.

Sometimes people who see me teach as a catechist get the wrong idea.  They see how I run a class for an hour (So much energy! So focused on the children! So kind! So enthusiastic!) and imagine my own kids must be getting that 16 hours a day.

Um, no.

Just because I can do something for an hour does not mean I can do it all day every day.

But the thing about being a catechist, is that there’s a certain pressure to be an unrealistically good person.  Talking to friends who have worked in ministry elsewhere (non-catholic, as it happens), it seems to be par for the course.  You’re a Christian Leader.  You’re a Teacher and an Example.  And if you screw-up, You’re Fired.

It isn’t enough to be competent at your work.  Your work is not only to teach what is right and wrong, but to somehow meet spec.  Our #1 message is that we are all wretched sinners in need of a Savior, but if you’re a priest / minister / catechist, you’d better not be especially needful of that Savior.

That’s not real.

I’m fortunate, in that although I certainly get tempted to commit enormous sins, I mostly stick to goofing off and yelling at my kids as the bread and butter of my sinfulness.  So I guess I have a job as long as I can keep that up.

But here’s what: Everybody faces temptation.  I have been very moved by the humility of ordinary Christians who will openly acknowledge horrid sins.  I did it, I should not have done it, I am sorry I did it, I will never do it again so help me God. 

Public ministry discourages that humility.  It discourages it slowly and insidiously, by first teaching you to deny the venial sins.  What will people think if they find out I ______?  Will they refuse to let me minister to _______ if they hear that I _______?  I am not alone among catholic volunteers in being a tad nervous about confessing to my own parish priest.  I work for the guy — what if he gets the wrong idea when he hears my confession?

[I do, anyway, though not as often as would be good for me.  A lousy prayer life is one of my other besetting sins.]

So I am unsurprised when I hear that some Famous Catholic is by all appearances guilty of some tremendous sin, but is unable to admit to having done wrong.  To see clerics justify their serious sins, and maybe even leave the church over them?  Well, I’ve seen other ministers brush off lesser sins.  It is a staircase.  At the bottom you put on a good face for the public; as unseemly bits seep out here and there, what you cannot hide, you must somehow justify.  By the time a serious temptation comes along, the habit of fleeing condemnation is long since engrained.

Forgiveness is only way out.

You want honest clergy?  Learn to forgive.  Not to deny, not to downplay, not to ignore.  To forgive.   Where sin abounds, grace must abound all the more.

The Christian paradox is that where grace abounds, sin loses its hold.  For if I know I will be forgiven, then I can admit I was wrong.  And if I can admit I was wrong, and only if I can admit I was wrong, then I can begin the work of repairing my soul.

The Rite by Matt Baglio

The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist, by Matt Baglio, Doubleday, 2009

I recommend this book, on the condition that you read the whole thing.  Otherwise, skip.  Just not healthy any other way.  –>> And no I have not seen the film, [which Father L. reviewed here, and has even more to say on the whole topic here]  and no I’m not planning to see the film, because I am too impatient to watch things when I could be reading instead.  Also I see on the author’s page that the paperback has updated material in it — my comments here are based on the edition above.

Anyhow, back to the book.  Here’s what it is, per the author:

The purpose of this book is not to promote any one faith over another, but to offer a detailed account of one priest’s journey from a rational skeptic to a practicing exorcist. I didn’t set out to write with any preconceived bias and as such the book is written in a straightforward journalistic style, which means that I give respect to the beliefs and testimonies on all sides, including medical science.

And that’s what it is.  We follow Fr. Gary Thomas (a real guy) as he heads to Rome on sabbatical in 2005, after being freshly appointed diocesan exorcist.  His travails are, wow, amazingly normal.  If you spend any amount of time in the Catholic Church, you will totally recognize the place.   You couldn’t write fiction like this.  Fr. Thomas does finally manage to secure an apprenticeship with a practicing exorcist, and the book version does clearly show the humdrum, hard, dull work that goes with the territory.

[Interestingly — the reports of boring catholic exorcisms match very closely to what I have heard described by evangelical protestants who have experience with boring exorcisms of their own.  Different details as far as the methods of the exorcists, but identical phenomenon on the recipients’ end.]

The author sticks to the straightforward, journalistic style all the way through.  It is not a “catholic” book in the sense of trying to evangelize or prove a point of the faith.  The reporting could come straight out of the Herald Tribune.  But it is a firmly catholic book in the sense that any book which earnestly reports the truth is necessarily catholic.

In addition to following Fr. Thomas’s personal story, the book explains catholic teaching on the supernatural in very clear terms.  There is also an examination of how demon possession relates to psychological disorders, including interviews with secular researchers who reject supernatural explanations.  [One of the first jobs of the exorcist is to find a qualified psychiatrist to rule out natural causes.]   One of the reasons I think it is important to stick with the book through to the end, is that it is not at all clear how things are going to turn out, or whether the book will ultimately end up affirming the catholic faith.  [It does.  It can’t help it.  Tell a true story, that’s what you end up with.]

The book follows Fr. Thomas through to his first “for real”, no-doubts-about-it exorcism, in 2007, after he is back home in the states and settled in to his parish assignment.  And here’s the conclusion, so you can rest easy, since if you are smart you will naturally be quite wary of picking up books on these sorts of topics:

These prayers do have power, he thought.  It was a visceral reminder that the age-old conflict between good and evil, sin and salvation, was far from over.  Not only did this validate his calling as a priest, and his choice to become an exorcist, but it was a powerful confirmation of one of the deepest mysteries of his faith.  Even though evil existed in the world, there was a way to defeat it.

Will there be fake news in Heaven?

The IC is having a book-release party for Felon Blames 1970s Church Architecture for Life of Sin. Go take a look.

Someone was asking me yesterday which blogs I follow, and of course I completely blanked out.  (Um, look at my sidebar?).  But I believe I’ve read every single post by the Ironic Catholic since however many years ago it was I discovered the place.   And probably on that day I scrolled through the entire archive.

Intelligent, clean-cut catholic satire that *is* funny and *is not* mean.  How many other writers could sit in the middle of that venn diagram?

Higher Ed

Darwin writes here about how everyone’s getting a college degree these days, and the economic consequences.  I was going to leave a comment, but I finally just decided to hit the ‘like’ button and be done with it.

Mr. Magundi laments the consequences of collegization for communities, but offers a hopeful solution:

We have raised the price of higher education to the point where it may simply be ruinous even for comfortably well-off families. And so we may end up abandoning the university system as we’ve built it up, in favor of a system where we stay home for most of our higher education, perhaps in community colleges, or in some similar institution we haven’t thought of yet. Educated people might get in the habit of thinking of the place where they grew up as home. And in spite of the disadvantages to Harvard and Cornell, I think that might be a very good thing.”

Am I the only one horrified that you can’t get a decent catholic college education without taking out a mortgage on your life?  Though I think charities such as Mater Ecclesiae Fund have their hearts (and wallets) in the right place, I find it frankly predatory that catholic colleges will load students up with such levels of debt to begin with.

Yes, I meant that.

***

Meanwhile, Public Discourse is running this essay.  The gist: the political science education offered in the Ivy League in the 1990’s let ideology get in the way of reliable scholarship — to the detriment of the State Department today.  Well, funny about that.  Because those of us getting our int’l poly-sci degrees from Backwater State U, we were studying under some of these guys.  Taking courses like “Islam, Politics and Revolution”.

–> And happily for the State Department, some our grads found their way to Washington.  So not all is lost.  Most of us local-U grads grow up to be, well, locals.  But we let loose a tithe of our debt-free adventurers, to go assist our better-indoctrinated educated brethren up north.

So if our government should get something right, you know who to thank.

Just kidding.  Sort of.

Rant of the Day – Romance

Gwen rants so I don’t have to. Topic is romance novels, Christian and not.

***

But here’s my rant: Parenting, marriage, and yes, NFP literature that sets up ideal-husband jobs.  As if the measure of a man were whether he wrote down your temperature for you every morning. (No, really honey, just go yell at kindly remind the kids to make themselves breakfast, I’ll write down my own temp, thanks.  In this nice quiet room AWAY from the noisy people.)

A major moment for us in the first weeks of parenting, was the discovery that TWO sleep-deprived parents was a very, very bad idea.  Much better for ONE parent (the lactating one) to be up all night with young Mr. Screechy.  The other adult could thus be rational and productive during daylight hours, and provide actual useful help.  Do you really want pointers on how to change a diaper at 3 AM?  No.  Better not to have the spouse “helping out” at that time.

[In our marriage.  Maybe some couples prefer the share the duty.  For us, it was a recipe for colicky grow-ups.]

I don’t mind helpful ideas.  I am forever indebted to the Mother’s Rule of Life lady for teaching me to get the coffee-maker set up the night before.  Not that I am organized enough to do that, but at least now I know.  But all this “a good husband would . . .” or a “a good wife should . . .” just sets the stage for smoldering resentment.

***

Ahem.  And this has nothing to do with how I forgot my anniversary.  Again.  And the boy’s birthday as well.  It’s a busy month.  I made dinner for people, that’s pretty good, right?

nothing new under the sun

On the topic of catholic education, a friend points me to this encyclical (Dec/21/1929), which in turn quotes this one (Jan/10/1890).  Worthy reading, and not only for internet debate purposes.  ==> Though you will quickly learn not to quote to selectively, lest your opponent trounce you with a counter-quote from the same document.

So there’s something to do tonight, in order to not think about eating.  For example if your next door neighbors are grilling steaks.

The popes.  The internet.  Powerful combination.

Writing today — Good Friday — is nerve-wracking.  It cannot be done well.  It is the day we remember we are small and weak and mostly useless, and that if God Himself were to come and take us by the hand, we’d probably still screw it up.  (And, happily: God knows this, and will come do it anyway.  Lamb slain since the foundation of the world.  It is His nature, to pour himself out for us.)

But anyway I want to point today to the battle in front of us.  Darwin gave us a snippet yesterday, and if you read the combox at either of his blogs, you get the picture.  You already knew about it, of course.  If you are catholic and you can fog a mirror, you know that our church is a giant jumble of bickering and snippiness.

It is a battlefield.  Our Church.

When the Lord of the Rings movies came out, I found it curious to learn that Peter Jackson’s specialty was horror movies.  Then I thought: Yes, of course.  War is always horror.*  

And so, our church is festooned with all the horrors of battle — the injured, the angry, the bitter, the violent, the sadistic.  And all the wonders: self-sacrifice, obedience, heroism, love unto death.  Jesus has promised the gates of Hell shall not prevail against us.  The implication is that those gates shall certainly give it their best in trying.

It is thus not surprising, that having so thoroughly torn apart American families, having so successfully pitted parents against their children, even to the point of murder, having made every virtue the object of social scorn, and every sin the object the great praise, Satan should now set his sights on our Catholic schools.  It is not enough for him, to attack our parish schools where he will.  He must incite us to civil war, pitting catholic families against the schools and, where he is able, catholic schools against families.

This is nonsense.

Refuse.

Refuse.

Do not be the infantry and the cavalry taking shots at one another.  Fight the real enemy.

***

I wish you a very good Friday.

And if, like me, you are perhaps not so successful at being good, then may it at least be a very grateful Friday.

******************************************************************************

*A similar case:  Mel Gibson and The Passion.  A most violent day.  Who else could render it so clearly, except someone who specialized in bringing violence to the theaters and living rooms of the world?  God can use anyone.  Anyone at all.